Metal News Archives - Page 93 of 255

WAKE, THEORIES, AND VERMIN WOMB TO ENGAGE IN SEISMIC ACTIVITY THROUGHOUT WESTERN NORTH AMERICA, WITH ASSISTANCE FROM NCS

Aug 022016

During the month of October and continuing into the first week of November, three bands with tremendous firepower at their disposal will threaten the structural integrity of venues up and down western North America, from Tijuana, Mexico, in the south to Vancouver, BC, in the north. The bands are Wake, Theories, and Vermin Womb, and we’re helping spread the word about this tour, basically because we enjoy the spectacle of large-scale demolition jobs — and because this is a completely DIY tour booked by the bands that deserves our support.

If you get out a map and trace the precise route of this tour, it comes uncomfortably close to tracking some major fault lines that run down the West Coast. Theories play two shows in Nevada and then join Wake and Vermin Womb for performances at the Southwest Terror Fest in Tuscon (headlined by Pig Destroyer and Agoraphobic Nosebleed). After that the tour heads to Tijuana for the bands’ first-ever appearance there and then turns north and rampages right up the coast, through California, Oregon, Washington, and then on across the border into British Columbia. Continue reading »

BANDCAMP IS NOW HOME TO THE 200TH METAL LABEL

Metal News 1 Response »

Aug 022016

Today marks a milestone worth recognizing: Norway’s Indie Recordings has become the 200th metal label to set up shop on Bandcamp. We learned this through a post by our friends at Metal Bandcamp, who have been keeping track of such things since 2011. As a measure of how much things have changed, in November 2011 the founder of Metal Bandcamp, MaxR, wrote a guest post for our site (here) identifying the 10 metal labels who had established Bandcamp pages as of that time — only 10 in 2011, but now 200.

If you want to see the actual list of all 200 metal labels that Metal Bandcamp has compiled, go here, and to read more about this 200-label milestone, check out Max’s post about the event here.

Things really have changed dramatically in the distribution of music since Bandcamp first launched. Our first post about the phenomenon of Bandcamp was this one back in March 2010. After outlining the features then offered by Bandcamp in detail, I concluded with this thought: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (BY DGR): VOLTURYON, NECROMANCING THE STONE, DAWN OF DEMISE, EVERGREY, MASTIC SCUM, SPURN, S-TOOL, NOCTEM

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Aug 012016

(DGR volunteered for round-up duty to start our week, and brings us new music from seven bands plus new-album news from an eighth.)

We have been trying our damndest to keep up with the flow of music that has been spilling forth from the gaping maw of heavy metal recently, but it has become clear that this is a war that must be fought on multiple fronts. Thus, I find myself once again deploying to the Seen and Heard front lines with a veritable smorgasbord of new music, videos, and album announcements for you to all enjoy.

I had a lot of fun figuring out where to position each band this time, as I have a very symmetrical idea of how things in this Seen and Heard should be approached — resulting in tremendously heavy music spilling into some infectiously light stuff and then returning right back to the abyss from which it came. You may need to settle in for this one; there’s a lot of fantastic stuff packed within this round-up, and it just goes to show that 2016 is proving to be a hell of a year for metal. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MESHUGGAH, AUROCH, ARSIS, ANICON, ANCIIENTS, BRAIN TENTACLES, BATTLE DAGORATH, FERAL LIGHT, HELEN MONEY, VANHELGA

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 15 Responses »

Jul 292016

I mentioned in a post earlier this week that I’ve been distracted during nights this week by a televised political convention (because I am a political junkie with low willpower), and I also had to make a quick out-of-town trip. Metal didn’t wait for me while I was diverted, and so I have an immense list of new things from the last few days that I want to recommend. I’ve cut the list down to a mere 10 items, which I’ve collected here. Seriously, I’m aware that 10 is a lot, so I’ve choked back my usual desire to spill a lot of words.

I’m starting with two news items and then following those with 8 new songs or videos, presented in alphabetical order by the name of the artist.

MESHUGGAH

I no longer subscribe to Revolver magazine. If I still had the subscription, I might have seen the full-page ad at the top of this post, which so far seems to be the only disclosure that Meshuggah’s new album The Violent Sleep of Reason will be released by Nuclear Blast on October 7. Here’s another fan pic of the ad: Continue reading »

RELAPSE RECORDS PODCAST NO. 44 — FEATURING INTER ARMA

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Jul 292016

Relapse Records launched their first podcast way back in February 2010, showcasing both brand new and classic tracks from Relapse artists, as well as exclusive interviews, and it’s still going strong more than six years later. All of the podcasts since that first one are collected at the Relapse Records Podcast site (here), but beginning last month the podcast will now be hosted by a changing array of other platforms. Our friends at Invisible Oranges hosted Edition No. 43 in June, and this month NCS has the pleasure of providing a platform for No. 44 — and it’s especially pleasurable for us because this podcast features an interview with one of our favorite heavy bands, Virginia’s Inter Arma.

This edition of the podcast — which you can stream below and also download for listening at a later time — includes a big group of diverse new songs, including tracks by Red Fang, True Widow, Ringworm, Myrkur, The Album Leaf, Horseback, and Nothing, as well as songs by recent Relapse signees Survive, Integrity, Brain Tentacles, and Sumerlands. It also includes some older songs from the likes of Disembowelment and Human Remains, as well as classic tracks by Don Caballero and Revocation. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KHEMMIS, CORONER, SATURNO, BANGLADEAFY, DIPLOID

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Jul 272016

I have a confession to make: I’m a political junkie. For the good of my mental and emotional health, I wish I could cut back (there’s no point in trying to quit), but right now I probably couldn’t get clean if my life depended on it. I’ve been glued to the Democratic Party convention coverage the last two nights, which explains why we haven’t had the usual volume of posts since the weekend. Things aren’t likely to get back to normal until after this particular circus comes to an end.

I did manage to pull this round-up together this morning, as well as a hell of a premiere earlier today — and a bit later we will have another Neill Jameson post about black metal. I’ll start with two citing news items and then move to some new song streams.

KHEMMIS

I still remember when I first heard the music of Khemmis at the Denver Black Sky festival in the summer of 2014. It was a real eye-opening experience. Even someone as half-witted as me could tell they were something special. Lots of other people figured that out last year when they heard the band’s debut album, Absolution. And now we have a second album to look forward to, as revealed in an announcement late yesterday. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: 40 WATT SUN, DYSRYTHMIA, ALCEST, INQUISITION, ASPHYX

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 11 Responses »

Jul 262016

Yesterday I loaded up a Seen and Heard round-up with music from 9 bands I had discovered in a single morning, most of them of the more obscure variety. Today I’ve again decided to focus exclusively on things I discovered through a whirlwind tour of our in-box and Facebook this morning, but this time the bands have a higher profile than yesterday’s group. Of course, these things are relative; the odds are that none of the people you encounter today who aren’t already your friends will have heard of any of these bands. And of course that is their loss.

40 WATT SUN

This first item him me like a bolt from the blue. Although I haven’t been regularly searching for news about 40 Watt Sun, I think in the recesses of my mind I just assumed we would never have another album by this particular project of Patrick Walker (ex-Warning) — but indeed we will, in less than three months’ time. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AEPHANEMER, CRUCIFIED MORTALS, LUNATIC AFFLICTION, NABAATH, NAG, PIT OF CARNAGE, RUSSIAN CIRCLES, ZQKMGDZ , AUBE GRISE

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Jul 252016

I had a few ideas for a Monday round-up that percolated over the weekend. And then this morning, when I crawled through what had arrived in the NCS in-box since I went to sleep last night, all those ideas were shoved aside and put on the shelf for later retrieval. I do have poor impulse control, and therefore decided I would devote this post to nothing but what I discovered this morning.

Mind you, not everything I found in our in-box was worth spreading around (e.g., news about a new device for preventing snoring), but an unusually high percentage was. And what I especially liked about what I found was the serendipitous fact that the songs were quite varied in their styles of heaviness.

Now there’s quite a lot of music here, and so I’m going to do my best to keep my verbiage to a minimum. I’ve arranged the tracks in alphabetical order by band name, except for the last one… because I think it’s best experienced as a conclusion to this playlist.

AEPHANEMER

Until seeing the wonderful cover art that I put at the top of this post I had forgotten that Dark Tranquillity’s Niklas Sundin was a visual artist as well as a musical one. This creation adorns a new album named Memento Mori by the band Aephanemer from Toulouse, France. It will be released on September 16, but the band have already made one song from the album available for streaming and free download at Bandcamp. Its name is “Unstoppable”. Continue reading »

TOURISM: GORGUTS TO PLAY AUSTIN, AZ (AND OTHER NORTH AMERICAN CITIES) WITH INTRONAUT AND BRAIN TENTACLES

Metal News 4 Responses »

Jul 252016

Creeping through the NCS e-mail in-box this morning while trying to wake up I spied an item that achieved that objective better than coffee: an announcement by Season of Mist that the phenomenal Gorguts will be mounting a North American tour this fall, with support from Intronaut and Brain Tentacles. Called The Pleiades Dust Tour, it begins on October 3 in Brighton, MA, and travels through assorted other U.S. and Canadian locations for the rest of the month, ending in New York City on the 30th.

As usual in perusing such announcements, I had eyes for only one thing: Would there be a stop in Seattle? Having found that, yes, there will be, I ignored all other info in the flyer — until a Texas-based friend expressed sadness that the tour would be stopping in Austin, Arizona, rather than Austin, Texas. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: WORMROT, AETHERIAN, VIRVUM, MORDOR, PANTHEIST

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Jul 232016

Getting a very slow start on this Saturday. Went to sleep very late last night without having begun writing the post you are now reading, and then slept for 9 hours — and still didn’t want to get out of bed. I can’t remember the last time I slept for 9 hours, or anything close to that. I felt groggy as shit for a couple of hours after waking up. Pretty sure that was sleep grogginess rather than the after-effects of all the wine I consumed last night with my spouse and some friends. Pretty sure.

Either way, I now feel more alert and invigorated, having listened to the music collected in this post. This collection doesn’t really make much of a dent in the long list of new tracks and videos I came across since the last round-up I assembled. As usual, there’s not much rhyme or reason to why I picked these selections rather than others. Austin Weber also contributed one of these items, as you’ll see below.

WORMROT

On July 20, Singapore’s Wormrot announced that they will be releasing a new album named Voices on October 14, and they revealed the great cover art you see above by Zahir Sanosi (aka Kilas). Voices comes five long years since their last album, Dirge. Wormrot made a video to announce the new album, and it includes a new song from the album called “Fallen Into Disuse”. Continue reading »

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